To think the £900 I paid for a structural survey is not worth more than the paper I wipe my arse on?

[Megglevache]

Tell me it's not just me that's had a disgrace for a survey?

Things like "that might be dodgy but I didn't have a ladder/couldn't move stuff/it was disguised by xyz"

How the hell is it different from a basic survey/valuation/homebuyers survey?

£900?????Pitiful...

£900? Try £2500. And even then, like yours, he basically just listed everything that could potentially be a problem. Completely pointless document. Am on IPad, so can't do emoticons, but you can imagine which I'd use...

Mine was crap too - Like "might have some damp - consult an expert. might have something else -consult an expert at least a dozen times ..

Same here. I commissioned a structural survey by specialists in that area, prior to a "normal" survey and I still can't get my property on the market because the "normal" surveyors have rejected it. Why? Because they only surveyed the front and side of the building and not the back. I phoned them up to question this, got told to "stop speaking so quickly" and then hung up on. But not before I got him to admit he had only "looked over the garden wall" (7 feet high!) and "not seen" the repair to the previously cracked lintel over the rear door, which was the cause of the worry over settlement and the whole point I recommissioned a structural survey...

A couple of months ago I tried to get a firm of commercial surveyors out to survey a roof, access onto a flat part of the roof via a roof hatch from the top floor landing. Very safe. Surveyor looked at the ladder, refused to go up it and told me he would "look at some photographs of it if I got a roofer out to take some" and that he could recommend someone. Yeah, right.

Whole industry needs legislation to tighten up dodgy practises. Cannot believe they are supposed to be professionals and have a professional governing body.

We found it to be an aching waste of money too.

'Don't know much about electrics, get an electrician to have a poke about in that cupboard thing that I think I saw near the stairs, perhaps'

'From the comfort of my car, the roof appears to be sound, perhaps'

'The garden has a slope, and this may affect the slopiness of any planting you may wish to plant in the planting areas, perhaps'

I agree. We were told the cracks "might be subsidence - get a structural engineer to survey", "the electrics might be crap - get an electrician to survey", "the woodwork might have woodworm/dry rot/wet rot- get a woodwork firm to survey".

Aside from the fact that you will never get a independent survey from someone who stands to gain from diagnosing dry rot or dodgy electrics, I was left wondering what exactly I had paid for. I could've done the job myself.